Hardy Boat uses the web effectively combined with highly focused direct mail.

Topic for Discussion: Why is the web working for Stacey and Al?

Answer: They want a very specific audience.

For a small business to compete with msn.com would be very difficult. However, if you want to simply find and advertise to every birdwatcher who wants to see with their own eyes the Atlantic Puffins, now you have a target you can handle! Stacey said, "There are people that have to see birds. They have a life list, and they list all the different species of birds that they've seen, and so I do mailings to birding groups that might want to come out and see Atlantic puffins. This is the only place you can see Atlantic puffins in the United States."

Can you imagine creating a database of "Puffin Lovers"? Certainly it is a subset within the Audubon Society and other birding organizations. But what a wonderful challenge. Parsing lists is a new art form. Speaking of art, among the many summer residents of Monhegan Island, a destination of the Hardy Boat, have been the likes of famous artists. Wouldn't it possible to create a mailing list of the people who love to go to Monhegan and love the work of these historic summer residents of Monhegan?

Within fifteen minutes and using a web search engine and many different combinations of words, we found literally thousands of references. Art classes and workshops, and owners of "Monhegan" art by Jamie Wyeth, Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent, George Bellows, Zero Mostel, and slightly lesser known like Ida Proper, Robert Henri, Edward Willis Redfield, Randall Davey, Leon Kroll, Josephine Hopper, John McPherson, Emil Holzhauer, Abraham Bogdanove, Aaron Draper Shattuck, Samuel Peter Rolt Triscott, William Chadwick, Wilson Irvine, Ernest Albert, Chauncey Ryder, William Robinson, Jay Connaway, Rudolf Scheffler, Charles Ebert, Mary Roberts, Constance Cochrane, Isabel Branson Cartwright, Mary Taylor Winter, Joe deMartini, Nick Luisi, Moe Shulman, Jean Liberté (we have one of his paintings!), Mike Loew, William Hekking, Caleb Stone, Dyan Berk, Susan Gilbert, Elena Jahn, Frances Kornbluth, Daphne Pulsifer, Valerie Borgal and so on and on. Each person listed brought us to references with web sites with physical addresses and email addresses.

Al and Stacey have a great little web site. The lesson here for all small business owners is: bring the content development of your web site under your own roof and make it as easy to update as it is to send an email.

Topic for Discussion: How many customers and what gross sales revenue per year do you need to sustain your business? ...to have a "good year"?

Answer: Learn your ratios, learn how to develop relations with people you enjoy and love to have around you. At some point in time, your business will be valuable, you will have a sustained coterie of customers who are like friends and family, and when you want to go on to other things, these people will help you value your business, possibly even buy into it or buy it. Parsing your lists means becoming increasingly focused.

You think about it: What value do you create for customers and employees? Have you every asked your customers or employees why they are in a relationship with you? If so, what did they say? If not, why not?